5-10-15-20: Titus Andronicus' Patrick Stickles

"Weezer were the rock on which me and all of my buddies built our church."

Photo by Elisabeth Vitale

Welcome to 5-10-15-20, where we talk to artists about the music they loved at five-year interval points in their lives. Maybe we'll get a detailed roadmap of how their tastes and passions helped make them who they are. Maybe we'll just learn that they really liked hearing the "Count Duckula" theme song over and over when they were kids. Either way, it'll be fun.

For this edition, we checked in with Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles, 25.

Growing up, my parents didn't really have any popular music around the house except for the Big Chill soundtrack. So any time that there was any kind of rocking or rolling happening around the house, it was that CD. That Four Tops song especially sticks out in my mind. My parents could tell you about the younger version of myself dancing around to it wildly.

I guess it really speaks to the universal appeal of the Motown songbook, since I love all that stuff now as much as I did back then and it continues to feel awesome every time. And now it's a nice shared memory. Me, my brother, and my sister would sometimes listen to that stuff when we get together. When the second Big Chill soundtrack got released, that was the big Christmas present that we were all pumped about that year.

There weren't a ton of other options besides, like, classical music or opera or whatever stuff my parents were listening to at the time. We liked it a lot, but also it had a lot to do with the formation of our ideas about popular music. For Americans, there's not a lot of better places to start than Motown. We were just discovering the joys of life to the sweet strains of the Four Tops. Funny that it would be the song about everything feeling old.

Around that time, I began my own explorations with popular music. I discovered a copy of They Might Be Giants' Flood that my sister had forgotten about, probably at my age. Discovering that tape and listening to it by myself, getting into it on my own, was kind of a transformative experience. That was never something I had done with music before. Music was always something that someone else put on. But They Might Be Giants was music that felt like it was mine. It was my experience.

They Might Be Giants is probably a good entry into this exciting new medium of recorded music since a lot of its appeal is kind of extramusical, as far as being very funny and quirky and charming. And the They Might Be Giants guys seemed like a little bit awkward and nerdy. That was good for me at that age, being kind of an awkward, goofy kid. And listening to "Birdhouse in Your Soul" suggested that there might be a whole new world of possibilities for me to discover, somewhere out there.

They Might Be Giants did always present themselves as the "Other". They definitely weren't presenting themselves as being, like, special superhumans. They were just kind of regular, nerdy dudes. I wasn't thinking about it consciously at the time, but they were rejecting a lot of coolness that was beginning to be forced on me, a boy of 10 trying to find his place in the world. Perhaps They Might Be Giants did a lot to suggest that I didn't have to adhere to some of the mores that some other popular music might suggest.

PS: "Tiny Toons", yeah. That's what made listening to the tape appealing to me. I had seen that episode with "Particle Man" and "Istanbul", and so I already knew a couple hits. The tape seemed to be a pretty big hit parade for the inclusion of those two. That was another helpful transition, for sure.

Weezer is a very important indie passage for American rockers, I've found. To me and all my buddies back in school who were starting to get interested in alternative rock, Weezer was definitely the band because they hit your pleasure centers as squarely as any other music you could think of, as far as being rich with melody and pretty easy to dance to a lot of the time. But also, the fuzzy guitars were very exciting and new-sounding, and all the latent sexual frustration, particularly in the Pinkerton songs, were intriguing.

I think that for a lot of people my age, Weezer was the first indie rock band, kind of like the indie rock gateway drug. Weezer certainly became the band, the rock on which me and all of my buddies built our church, so to speak. Pretty much any band that our friends were in in high school probably covered at least two Blue Album songs at some point.

The first two Weezer albums at that age were sacred texts, pretty much the Bible, big jumping off points for a life of indie rock. I was very obsessed with "You Gave Your Love to Me Softly" as a kid. Again, it's that sexual frustration coming out. It was on the soundtrack to the movie Angus, which probably spoke resoundingly to the sort of person that'd be interested in Weezer at the age of 15.

For my friend Andrew [Cedermark]'s 16th birthday, we went to see them at the Jones Beach Amphitheater in Wantagh, New York. His parents actually got us a limousine. Is that the best birthday present you've ever heard of? Dude, so we felt awesome. That was it: Weezer was a really big part of our lives, to the point that big events, such as 16th birthdays, it was easily fathomable for Weezer to be the crux of such an important day such as that.

I mean, no. Even though seeing the Blue Album or Pinkerton performed live is a really appealing prospect to me, I don't agree that they're doing it over two nights. The records are only 45 minutes each, so it's completely reasonable to play them in one night. But maybe I'll break down because there's a lot of songs from that era which I haven't seen in concert and I'd really like to.

Pitchfork: We posted a video a little while back of you and Cassie Ramone covering "The Sweater Song".

PS: She was another with whom I bonded over the music of Weezer at that age. It was, in fact, our mutual interest in Weezer that really got us to be friends back when we were just 15 or 16 years old. And that was the way of it for tons of friends. Cassie and I have known each other for 10 years. Real Estate-- me and my buddies got to know them because they advertised that they were going to have a concert where they were going to play the whole Blue Album. That was a sufficiently exciting prospect to us kids in the next town. It was kind of a tribal identifier, almost. If someone else was into Weezer at that age, it was a safe bet that they could become your friend, and more often than not that's how it worked out.

DC Snipers: "All Humans Are Garbage"

The DC Snipers were a band from New Jersey. They were a regular, old-fashioned punk band or garage rock band, which featured on guitar a man named Dan McGee, who's presently the leader of the Spider Bags. [Mike Sniper of Blank Dogs and the Captured Tracks label was also the bassist in DC Snipers - Ed.] Me and my friend Sam, who plays in the great band Liquor Store now, used to go see the DC Snipers a lot. When you're 20 years old, you kind of feel like you're not a kid anymore even though you pretty much are-- the sense of one's old life being over, being out of high school and looking into the future for some kind of indicators of how you might go about pursuing adulthood. For me and my buddies, DC Snipers provided that. They were from New Jersey, like us, so it was easy to identify with them, but they were a little older and they were starting to make it happen a little bit on the scene. So for better or for worse, they were role models for me and my pal Sam.

That might have led to some irresponsible decision-making, but it also reaffirmed the enduring power and excitement of punk music. To think that some bumbling dudes from New Jersey could create the latest ultimate punk anthem is a very empowering thing for a 20-year-old guy to witness. It also served as kind of a youthful sort of line in the sand between me and some of my college classmates, who maybe represented a different value system that I could pursue rather than punk.

Upon my friend Sam meeting them, I can recall this one girl who was big in the sorority scene at my college being shocked and appalled by him: "His jacket said 'All Humans Are Garbage'!" She was really disgusted with him, and I was like, "Oh, I see. I see what's going on here." And the template for thus far was set.

Pitchfork: Jersey definitely has a rich and deep history of punk bands. Do you consider your band to be a continuation of that tradition?

PS: I mean, sure, in so much as we're from New Jersey and we play punk rock music. If you think about the Misfits or these iconic New Jersey punk and indie rock bands, maybe the temptation would be to canonize them and think of them as being Olympian gods or something, but the DC Snipers kind of showed that that stuff was still going on on the ground-- that the power of punk, particularly the New Jersey strain of it, was accessible to everyone, including me and my buddies. Not to say we're as good as the Misfits by any means, but DC Snipers showed that it was perfectly reasonable to try.

On a personal note, me and my girlfriend's first date was to go hear Ian Svenonius DJ, so hearing Ian Svenonius' voice always touches a warm spot in my heart. But also, quite simply, he rocks. He kicks ass.

I'd never listened to much of Nation of Ulysses before, so discovering this song and the whole Plays Pretty for Baby album is a reminder to me that punk continues to hold unseen treasures. It's an exciting prospect. Nation of Ulysses were very idealistic, and they're a constant source of inspiration. Even though I can't really claim to understand all of the particulars of their party platform, there's no mistaking the power of their music. It's the spirit of righteousness, which is enormously exciting for me. It just shows that even though I'm 25, maybe I think I've seen it all, but the history of punk remains fertile grounds for inspiration and enjoyment and illumination.

I should also say that "Perpetual Motion Machine" is sick because it's got my man James Canty on the drums and he's the man. It's always a pleasure to hear him hack it up on whatever instrument he chooses.